Kennewell has just been selected in the Australian Masters hockey team, in the over 35s, after a big national tournament playing for NSW.

The mid-fielder adapted well to the conditions in Hobart for the championships and will now begin summer training ahead of playing for Australia in the Trans-Tasman tournament in New Zealand in May.

It’s been a meteoric rise into top level hockey after transforming from being the experienced player leading younger players to now being one of the youngest in the Masters team.

“It’s better to be called a master than a veteran, I guess,” Kennewell said.

“The highest level I played is open for Orange hockey. I’ve captained that a few times.”

She didn’t have time or a tremendous urge to play rep hockey when younger but now had a new outlook.

“I actually wanted to travel.  And I thought hockey would be a great way to get to travel.”

The change of view has already seen her travel to Tasmania and now New Zealand so it’s paying off.

However, she is learning that some of the new skills perfected in the open competition are not so readily used with the older players.

“There is a good quality of hockey but the newer skills aern’t developed.”

Moves such as the tomahawk, where you have a reverse stick shot on goal, are not so practised in the older game.

“I actually find it quite dangerous,” she said. “I don’t think you have the same control over the ball.”

Kennewell will be practising over summer away from her new teammates as the budgets in Masters hockey don’t extend to pre-season training camps.

However, she said they would be getting together early a week for training in New Zealand.

“We will go to New Zealand the week before the competition starts for training,” she said.

The NSW team finished fourth out of five teams in the national championships that ran from October 6-15. They finished the round robin stage with just one win but four draws.

The tournament was won by Queensland over Victoria and Tasmania.

Kennewell said: “Our team never got beaten by more than two goals. We had a good defence but we weren’t scoring goals. It shows how good how defence was.

“We had a draw with every team that was there. It was certainly a good result for us to draw with the likes of Queensland and Tasmania, the top teams.”

NSW beat the ACT 1-0 in their only victory.

Kennewell, one of the youngest in the team, played all eight games well enough to impress the national selectors.

NSW was most successful in the Women’s Masters Championship in the older age groups claiming the title in the over 55s, over 60s and over 65s categories.

They beat Queensland 1-0 (over 55s), WA 1-0 (over 60s) and Victoria 1-0 in the over 65s.

However NSW lost the over 50s final 1-0 to Western Australia.

WA won the over 40s category 2-1 over Queensland and fought out a thriller with Tasmania in the over 45s where the score was 0-0 at fulltime. It was finally resolved 2-0 in the Tasmanians’ favour.